Posted by Adam Kuban, January 4, 2008 at 3:45 PM
Ed LaDou—the pioneer of California-style pizza, the man behind Wolfgang Puck's Spago pizzas and the original California Pizza Kitchen menu, and the owner of Caioti Pizza Café in Studio City, California—died on December 27, 2007, of cancer in Santa Monica.
From the Los Angeles Times obituary:
In January 1982, Spago opened with LaDou as pizza chef, carrying out the visions of Puck. There was pizza topped with smoked salmon and pizza topped with duck sausage. Puck also allowed LaDou to select toppings. "It was like being an artist who'd worked with 10 colors all of his life and then got to use 300," LaDou once said.
Ed Levine here at Slice–Serious Eats HQ wrote about LaDou in his book Pizza: A Slice of Heaven:
The "chef-pizza" craze kicked into high gear in 1982, when Wolfgang Puck opened Spago. There, pizza chef Ed LaDou (now of Caioti Pizza Café) expanded the range of toppings to include barbecued chicken, merguez (lamb sausage), smoked salmon and crème fraîche, and Peking duck.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 6, 2006 at 12:30 PM
Caioti Pizza Café's Ed LaDou is a certified California pizza pioneer. He moved his nondescript, unassuming pizzeria from Laurel Canyon to its current Studio City location a few years ago, and he's never looked back. LaDou is a pizza toppings master. His barbecued chicken pizza will make it impossible to eat the pale imitation at a California Pizza Kitchen ever again. His toppings, which feature roast garlic, bacon, shallots, and lamb sausage, let you know that there is a serious culinary mind at work here. The only thing that's slightly disappointing at Caioti is the crust. It's a perfectly OK, thinnish crust that somewhat surprisingly comes out of a conventional gas-fired oven, but it's not unlike crust you've had a many other pizza places. Toppings this good created by someone as talented as LaDou deserve a better crust.
Update (1/4/2008): Sad news, ladies and gents. Ed LaDou died on December 27, 2007. No word yet on what will become of Caioti.
Caioti Pizza Café
Address: 4346 Tujunga Avenue, Studio City CA 91604 (map)
Phone: 818-761-3588
